When behavioral assessment detects frontotemporal dementia and cognitive testing does not: data from the Frontal Behavioral Inventory.
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Behavioral Symptoms↗
Biomedical subjects
Alessandro Iavarone
Publications and source records attributed to Alessandro Iavarone.
Brief report: error pattern in an autistic savant calendar calculator.
Special ability in computing the day of the week from given dates was observed in a 18 years old male, L.E., suffering from autism. Neuropsychological testing revealed severe deficits in all cognitive domains and poor explicit knowledge of calendar structure. The subject scored well above the chance level on dates of the past and future decades. Error rate and response latency increased with temporal remoteness of dates. Most of errors were in indicating the weekday before or after that of date stimulus. The performance and error pattern suggest that L.E. used "encapsulated" computation algorithm(s) for the day of week task.
Adolescent↗
Coping strategies and cognitive functioning in elderly people from a rural community in Italy.
Stressful situations may contribute to pathological states in elderly people facing harmful events. This study investigated the relationships between adopting appropriate coping strategies, transforming circumstances to personal preferences or adjusting personal preferences to situational constraints, and the efficiency of cognitive functioning in an elderly sample of 121 residents drawn from a rural community in southern Italy. They were administered the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Tenacious Goal Pursuit, Flexible Goal Adjustment, and Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations. Intercorrelations of scores suggested that facing stressful situations is somewhat associated with efficient cognitive functioning and coping strategies that ensure a wide range of solutions.
Activities of Daily Living↗
Age differences in mental scanning of locomotor maps.
PURPOSE: To investigate whether the metric quality of mental spatial representations of the environment changes with aging, by means of mental scanning of locomotor space. METHOD: Twenty young adults (age 21.1-30.8) and 20 old adults (age 60.4-76.4) were submitted to a battery of psychometric tests to assess the effects of aging on general cognitive functions and specific visuo-spatial abilities, and to determine which cognitive factors correlated with scanning performance. The mental scanning task followed. Participants firstly had to learn a path comprising six positions by walking and observing these; secondly, they had to use mental imagery to scan from a first to a second position, according to different distances. RESULTS: Aging reduces the validity of the metric information incorporated by mental spatial representations. Attentional and working memory resources, ability to manipulate spatial information and a general factor of abstract visuo-spatial reasoning strongly correlated with scanning performance. Finally, aging seemed to have a selective effect on cognitive functioning. CONCLUSIONS: Age differences emerge when demanding storage and processing of information are simultaneously required, as predicted by the Limited Resources view of aged cognition.
Adult↗
Effects of demographic and environmental variables on cognitive performance in a rural community sample of elderly people living in Southern Italy.
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The aim of our study was to understand how demographic and environmental factors may be associated with cognitive functions in a rural population of Southern Italy, with a very high percentage of elderly persons with little formal education. MATERIALS AND METHODS: From the population registry of San Marcellino (province of Caserta), out of 1089 persons aged over 60 years, a random sample of 300 residents received a door-to-door visit. Two hundred and twenty-six subjects were judged as not having significant cognitive impairment, on the basis of their personal history and Clinical Dementia Rating score (< 1). They were administered the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). RESULTS: A positive statistically significant correlation was observed between MMSE score and education, but not between MMSE score, age and gender. Normative data showed that 90% of the normal population from this area had an adjusted MMSE score of more than 16.20, a value far below the traditional cut-off score of 23/24 for diagnosis of dementia. Subjects living with their families showed better performance than persons living alone or only with spouses. CONCLUSIONS: This finding is consistent with other epidemiologic surveys, and suggests the possible role of ecological and environmental factors in preventing or compensating cognitive decline, at least in persons coming from homogeneous rural areas. Low social demands in a protective family environment do not stimulate high intellectual performance, and signs of dementia may not be recognized by persons living in this context until the patient reaches a severe stage of disease.
Aged↗
Psychological dimensions of celiac disease: toward an integrated approach.
Psychic alterations have been reported in celiac disease. Our aim was to evaluate the emotional impact of celiac disease diagnosis in adulthood, the patient/doctor relationship, and the patients' cooperation with disease treatment and diet. The patients were 114 adult celiac patients on a gluten-free diet, there were 25 untreated celiac patients. Self-administered questionnaires aimed to evaluate the patients' level of knowledge of disease, the emotional impact at diagnosis, and feelings during follow-up. Celiac patients showed good knowledge of the disease, directly correlated to their socioeconomic level (P = 0.011). At diagnosis, relief was most intense feeling (Mean +/- SD, 10.82 +/- 7.63), demographics, time latency of diagnosis, and the duration of the disease had no effect on the intensity of all feelings. The scores of the self-rated emotions were entered into a principal component analysis that generated three factors: 1 (fear, anger, anxiety and sadness), 2 (reassurance and resignation), and 3 (relief); patients judged the clinicians presenting the disease "in the right way" (F = 33.279; P < 0.0001). The right way correlated with relief and reassurance (P = 0.0009; P = 0.0008 respectively). At follow-up, anger was the predominant emotion that induced patients to transgress. A positive correlation was observed between feeling different and the sadness, anger, fear (P < 0.0001 for all). Anger was inversely correlated with actual compliance to diet (P = 0.0005). In conclusion, in adult patients, adaptive and psychological aspects must be taken into account to understand the celiac patient and for better clinical management.
Adaptation, Psychological↗
The Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB): normative data from an Italian sample and performances of patients with Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia.
The Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) is a short neuropsychological tool aiming to assess executive functions at the bedside. Two-hundred and thirty-six normal controls were administered the FAB and three other tasks assessing attentional and executive functions. The FAB was also administered to 28 patients suffering from mild Alzheimer's disease (AD, n. 15 subjects) or frontotemporal dementia (FTD, n. 13 subjects). The FAB showed good concurrent and discriminant validity and high internal consistency. Test-retest and inter-rater reliability were fairly good. A multiple regression analysis showed a significant positive effect of education and a negative effect of age. Cut-off values of non-parametric distribution were computed. A difference on FAB scores within dementia patients was observed, with subjects with FTD performing worse than patients suffering from AD.
Adult↗
[Acquired rectourethral fistula: case report].
Rectourethral fistulas are an uncommon complication of urinary or rectal surgery, trauma, inflammatory disease, radiation therapy for prostate cancer; they represent an unique challenge for the surgeon. Although closure can occure spontaneously, most cases of acquired rectourethral fistula need surgical repair. Despite a century of surgical experience, no single approach has been universally accepted. We report a case of a rectourethral fistula occurred in a 73 year-old man after a radical retropubic prostatectomy and external beam irradiation for prostate cancer, successfully treated with perineal approach.
Adenocarcinoma↗